Recent electoral results in the French Presidential election, the Greek legislative election and local elections Italy and Germany show that there is a rising swell of anti-austerity sentiment in Europe. By underpinning their electoral strategy with another bout of "austerity for the poor" after their "prosperity for the rich" budget in which they handed vast income tax cuts to the millionaire class they seem to be playing an incredibly risky game. The Tories are relying on the anachronistic, repeatedly gerrymandered and grotesquely unrepresentative Parliamentary electoral system to save them from any rise in anti-austerity sentiments in the UK.

Unlike our European neighbours, it would take an absolutely huge groundswell of support for alternative anti-austerity candidates in order for any measure of political control to be wrested from any of the big three "orthodox neoliberal" parties, but people like George Galloway and Caroline Lucas have shown that it is technically possible to beat the establishment parties, even under the rules of their own game. What would be needed for anti-austerity parties to succeed in the Westminster elections would be something hugely unpopular in the lead up to the next election, something like another round of malicious ideologically driven punishments for the poorest in society at a time when they are most vulnerable (thanks to the stagflationary economic policies of the coalition). Lets say another £25 billion slashed from unemployment benefits, disability benefits and pension funds.

If we add the Tories projected £25 billion in welfare savings to the £20 billion that the Coalition have already inflicted on the NHS, that gives us just enough to cover the £40 billion Dave and Gideon have found to hand over to the IMF in order to inflict similarly brutal austerity measures on the UK's European trading partners via IMF economic blackmail loans.